Tony, I know you said you can't guarantee exact turn rounds, but what might be the time frame on turn a around after receiving the ticket(s)? A rough estimate is what I'm trying to figure out because I'm gonna talk to Chris sometime this weekend and throw together a pack while I'm out at Acme. My next question is I heard the machine is glitchy with the "Simply Love"theme do you know the whats causing the machine to crash? If you do and if I took the time to sort it all out to where it would run without hiccups...do you think we could run instead of the current ones?

Ifc.NiNe, look through Tony's past posts and see when he has updated. That should give you an accurate time estimate.

At the moment, my attention happens to be here, so I'll generally get it taken care of the next time I go to Acme. I've got this queued on my flash drive for what will probably be Saturday (my next planned trip - I usually go both Saturday and Sunday mornings every weekend), but may go sooner if that's what I decide to do one night this week (probably not that likely this particular week, I'm kind of busy).

With the tracker in place to email me (and I do stay up to date on my email, always), I shouldn't lose any requests in the noise of the forums, so my turnaround time should still be "next time I go to Acme", as long as I have a link.

Something I've decided to do, since the tracker lets me, is to use the milestones feature to set deadlines for myself. I'll organize requests into milestones, like the one linked above, and set them to a date I feel is a reasonable promise, and I will hold myself to the date. i'm going to try treating this professionally to see if that keeps me on top of updates and maintenance.

Furthermore, I've been talking to Bill, and getting remote access to the machine shouldn't be difficult, since it turns out there's a functional ethernet jack on the wall behind the machine. Once that's set up, someone can see that a ticket is closed and go reboot the machine, or I'll set the machine to reboot that night.

As for Simply Love, the is completely crashes when you go to the song select screen. It also overwrites a ton of settings that it has no business touching when it crashes. I haven't dug into the crash logs, because fishing them off the machine is a bit of a chore, so I have so idea what's causing the problem. I did have the theme completely functional at one point, then vyhd and I made a couple more, completely unrealated changes to the system and it stopped working. I'm thinking a fresh install isn't the worst idea - anyone have a link to whatever the most recent OpenITG-friendly version is?

I hate having to dig the web every time I needed find the link to re-install this theme lol, but here it is:

http://www.mediafire.com/?8evs0223tjnd42l

Please make sure keep the forced novice modifiers off for the gimmick charts.

By the way, I'm having trouble accessing your tracker site.

I need to go back and fix some of the old tracker links - I just fixed the one in my signature, for example. The tracker is now running at http://acmeitg.pnwbemani.net.

@Kevin: That link is for Chromatic, not Simply Love.

EDIT: Realized I never mentioned this in my last post. Regarding turnaround time, I've been going to Acme at least twice a week (Sat/Sun mornings) pretty consistently, so I'm going to try and keep the turnaround time to a week in general. After remote access is set up, it'll probably be same day or next day. I do have a monthly M-F business trip that can throw my schedule into chaos, so the only promise  I'm willing to make is that I'll keep myself to the deadlines I set, but response times should be pretty quick on average from now on, especially since the tracker emails my phone on every new or updated ticket, so it'll be really hard to things to slip through the cracks.

I had an interesting for after all the more pressing work (i.e. packs, remote access, Simply Love, USBs). How would people feel if I did a little custom work on OITG and Simply Love so that the results screen worked like this:
- Press red to screenshot to USB
- Press both yellows to post screenshot to an Acme ITG Tumblr

It wouldn't take much to set up the machine to do this - a couple minor tweaks to the OpenITG source code and a one line change to the theme should be enough to send the appropriate data to a custom tool which then posts to Tumblr.

It's definitely nonessential, but it sounds cool to me.

Tony that Idea is super awesome!
Also regarding the Simply Love theme.
The newest update should be out within the next two weeks. I know some people who are personally testing it right now for bugs. It is supposed to be very friendly with OITG and just be an overall better version. I'd honestly just wait for a few weeks and then come back to it once the release is out.
Thanks for all the work you've been putting it. I'll have to come up there pretty soon and check it all out.

If you do get this setup, please keep documentation on how you did this as I'd like to add this option (or something very similar) to my machine.

If you add that Tumblr feature, you'll probably want to add some flag that is reset at the start of each song, to prevent jerkish people from running a song and then hitting the yellows repeatedly to submit dozens of copies of the screenshot.

Great, now I have to make sure whatever I do is Boxor-friendly...

Actually, that line of thinking just made things easier... I can make minimalist changes to OITG, and have it send off the post data to a webservice running on the same AWS server as the issue tracker, and set it up so that the machine identifies itself to the server, which then figures out which Tumblr to post to according to the machine ID. The webservice would only take like an hour or so to code, and that should make setup pretty minimal as well as make it so adding Tumblr integration does not noticeably waste resources on the already resource-starved Boxors.

How about this: anyone who wants Tumblr integration can use my instance of webservice instance for a low price (like $10/yr at most, just to help offset the cost - the first year is free, but the server will run me about $180/yr after that). I'll release the webservice code to the world, so anyone who wants to set up their own instance can do so easily (and for free), but for the ease of having it magically just work, you can pay me to handle everything for you. I don't want to exploit people here, but I can't be running live services for people entirely out of my own pocket, and a couple bucks a year to save yourself half or more of the setup work seems fair to me.

@Nykkel: It's easier than that - the flag has to last until you leave the results screen, since that's the only screen that will support screenshots based on button pressed (the Print Screen key works anywhere, IIRC, but keyboard input is disabled).

@AndyBurns: Sounds good, I'll wait for the next Simply Love release. I don't know where to watch for it, so let me know when it's out.

@Tony,

Don't do anything major to change it up. I forgot that the ACME machine isn't running original hardware. So, seriously, don't worry about it if it's a problem.

Personally, I think the idea of relying on a web server to direct uploads is a bad idea from a longevity POV. What happens if you get bored of ITG, or leave the area, or get hit by a bus? If that web server goes down, the ability to post scores does too. I'm not technically inclined like you, so I'm not sure what technical hurdles there are between the different possibilities on how to implement this, but I always felt the least interconnected pieces = greater long-term stability.

I just thought there would be something like a script on the machine where someone could simply replace the username/password with their own and it would upload it to that account instead of the ACME one. But I'm not a programmer, so what the f*ck do I know?

Programmatic Tumblr access is a little different than logging in throgh a browser and requires holding onto several extra pieces of authentication data permanently. It's not much to store, but it's a lot easier to set it up on a server. Normally I'd be all for keeping the upload code entirely on the machine, and it's totally doable that way, but the client/server architecture greatly simplifies the OITG work.

My goal is to reduce the on-machine setup to:
- Install my custom OITG fork
- Add a line to your preferred theme(s) to support the new screenshot command
- Add a couple new values to Stepmania.ini (server address, port)
- Create a new public/private key pair to sign server requests with.

A secondary goal is to minimize how much I have to touch OITG, since that makes it easier to keep my fork up to date with trunk updates - I don't want to force people to pick between my fork and the newest mainline features if it can be avoided.

As for the risk of me disappearing and the server goes down, I'm going to open source the whole thing (so anyone is welcome to set up their own at any time for however many machines they want to support), including anything I write to help with server installation and whatnot.

The server design (intentionally) doesn't preclude someone from running it locally on their machine (custom or Boxor) - it would only affect performance if it was serving multiple machines simultaneously, since my OITG fork will hold onto screenshots until the end of your set (so uploads can be tagged with high score names).

The server design will also allow for setting user ID's on USB drives so that there can be some degree of roaming features. My first potential extension is to allow a player to link a personal Tumblr or Facebook account so that you can upload your personal screenshots from any connected machine as long as you plug in your USB drive.

EDIT: Oh yeah, one place I could potentially take the server code is (potentially in conjunction with some minor additions to the USB logic to support cloud-based user profiles) to do any subset of the following, based on the player's preferences:
- Upload to machine's Tumblr
- Upload to personal Facebook/Tumblr
- Automatically save personal records to Groovestats for supported packs (I would have to volunteer to write some new GS server code to support this feature, but it could totally be done).

It'd be awesome if this could SOMEHOW be combined with Groovestats.

(I realize this is ridiculously difficult to do, but a man can dream).

Out of curiosity, since it sounds like the screenshot thing would require a server to work the way you intend, could it also work as a regional score database? Perhaps on startup the machine sends/receives a "regional" high scores list and on the theme it could display the local machine scores but might also show the regional high scores? This kind of "Groove Net" is something I've always wanted. Having my own machine is cool, but it also makes me feel very isolated from the rest of the community and their scores/achievements.

No reason it can't someday support a score tracker of its own - I've made the request/response logic extremely generic to support arbitrary future extensions, since that kind almost for free with the data format (Thanks Google).

Actually, with a little bit of work, I could do any of the following (note: no idea how any of these will impact Boxor performance,so some may require custom computers):
- Friends' scores - friend users regardless of machine, then you can pull up a list of friends records for arbitrary songs directly on the machine from the song select menu.
- Linked machines - machines friend eachother, works the same as user-to-user score lists, but for the top X scores among all friended machines. Basically the same thing as the regional listing.
- Website to view uploaded scores a la GS.

I have always wanted a score tracker to be automatic. Back when I was playing frequently, I would always stop using trackers because they were a pain and I wasn't competitive enough to make it worth it.

Potential Groovestats integration would make ITG like an Xbox Live Friends leaderboard, or iOS Game Center rankings, either of which would be awesome. Really awesome. I'd think that would be way more awesome to have over posting to a tumblr or Facebook account. /2cents

Overslept this morning, looks like I'll be there to add songs around 5:00.

@BLueSS: Having a leaderboard going would be really cool. Either way, the same data is being sent along - scores and screenshots - so the OITG changes are the same either way. However, integrating with Tumblr or FB is a lot easier than integrating with GS (which I'm assuming isn't designed to integrate with anything) or building my own new leaderboard. However, the really cool thing about the server approach is that I can start with Tumblr integration to get the OITG fork out there and tested on a few machines, then extend the server code to pipe the same score data over to GS or my own leaderboard if the player has a linked account.

Basically, you finish a set, your scores and screenshots go to the server, and then the server is welcome to do as many or as few things as it wants with those scores - no reason P1 can't post to a personal Tumblr and GS, while P2 posts to FB, GS, and a new leaderboard, while the machine posts to a machine Tumblr all in the same set. It's just that I need to add all of those features one by one and that takes time, so I'd rather start with the easiest features to confirm everything else works correctly first.

Yes Please.

Added packs yesterday, forgot to fix the new CMod set while I was at it. I'm heading back to Acme in the next hour or so, so I'll take care of it today.

EDIT: CMods are on the machine now. Every 50 BPM from C450 to C1200.

Thanks again for your efforts Tony.

Just curious, do you guys have humidity issues with the pads some days? I swear my pads get sticky and unplayable alot of the time, and powder just makes the problem worse. It's been raining alot the last few days/soggy snow so I figured I would see. Humidity % has been really high the last couple days too.

It is weird, ever since I started playing with socks the last few days, I've been noticing that the pads get sticky about 2-3 sets in. I've also noticed that powder doesn't really help much either. I'm not sure what the direct cause is, but it could potentially be that when you sweat, you could be wiping it off with the sock, thus the sock gets wet and becomes tacky. At least for me, that is what it seems like. I wear 3 layers of socks so I just alternate them when I feel that tacky/sticky feeling and it usually gets better, haha.

Yes. It gets really bad sometimes in my garage on rainy days. I use a box fan to blow across the pads while I play. This doesn't cool me off too much (it's already really cold in the garage), but it does help keep the pads dry and less grippy.

Hey guys,

Just making a quick post about the stage at ACME!

I've redone the entire player 1 side, seeing that it appeared to false trigger every once in a while. Here is what I did:

All arrows have two 2 inch pieces of weather stripping on each L bracket. On top of the weather stripping I added layers if tape:

Up Arrow: 10 layers of masking tape
Right, Left, Down: 6 layers of masking tape

This provides the best feel and timing at the cost of being slightly recessed.

As for the player 2 side, there is far more tape on each L bracket. This is to test how responsive the arrows are when they are perfectly flush with the center panel.

At the moment each arrow has two 2 inch piece of weather stripping and on top of the weather stripping layers of tape:

Up Arrow: 18 layers of masking tape
Left, Down Arrows: 16 layers of masking tape
Right Arrow: 23 layers of masking tape

The player 2 side is playing really well but there are some false triggers. However, the arrows are perfectly flush and feel amazing.

I will continue to keep everyone posted with regards to the stage!

Again if there are any issues with the stage, please post on the forums and I will fix it ASAP!

@Tony

This MIGHT be a working link for Simply Love:
http://r21freak.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23504

I probably might just be trying something that already doesn't work here, and I'm not sure whether the cab at ACME runs on oITG or SM3.95, but I tried it on my oITG, and initially it had a few problems, but then each of those problems disappeared each time I rebooted oITG and it works like a charm now.
The OP link is the one I downloaded the theme from.

Note to all:

You may not be able to recognize me. It's "mane-ly" because I won't come in looking like that regular "neigh-borly" kid that comes in to play ITG normally. I just hope that when I come in, I won't shock you guys enough that you'll attack me out of fear - I don't want to get into any "horse-play."

But, "hay," I'll see you all pretty soon, and this is just a little precaution
I hope to beast with you guys!

("Neigh," I'll probably have to fail a few 13s first)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLwpvOx1FvE